


Hold Tight

by CB_Magique



Series: Compilation of the Heart [5]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Destiny Islands, F/M, Memory Lane, Radiant Garden, zexiri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 16:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3257273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CB_Magique/pseuds/CB_Magique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kairi introduces Zexion to her favourite book and Zexion introduces Kairi to Ienzo's. As they read to each other, the day takes them on a solemn trip down memory lane, merging past and future while silently breathing meaning into the present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Tight

**Author's Note:**

> It keeps happening - more Princess Story one-shots and MOAR zexiri (that's really the best part, honestly, those two being all fluffy). I've gotten to the point where I'm posting stuff simultaneously with my fanfiction.net account, wow, I've come a long way. 
> 
> You might want to also know about a little comic called "Hold Close" by DA user IngridTan if you don't already. It went viral a while ago. And by the middle of this story, you'll know why I want you to know about it.

Biology was the best of the sciences, as far as Kairi was concerned, and to think that she had almost skipped sciences completely. Sora had almost skipped sciences too but some friendly pestering from Kairi and Riku about breaking the 'holy trinity' of high school science had rattled him enough that he eventually chose to take chemistry, to his friends' utter surprise. Riku, of course, did everything the hard way and picked physics as his science elective. Having study groups with her friends was fun, watching Riku nut through pages upon pages of boring mathematical calculations and dry diagrams (really, taking physics was like taking a second maths, who would submit themselves to that kind of hell?) and Sora trying to remember the elements well enough to balance chemical equations but none of it compared to Kairi's preferred method of study. She would sit in front of her boys as they eyed her enviously while she played memory with handmade study cards.

Studying for biology spoke to her innate creativity and usually consisted of drawing in coloured markers and sticking the pictures on brightly coloured cardboard. It was a calming activity that was even relaxing when she did them between writing three page essays for literature class or history and doing assigned problems for maths. It was even a pleasant way to spend a lazy afternoon when there was nothing else to do.

"What are you doing?"

Kairi gasped in alarm and whirled around in her desk chair, brandishing her scissors defensively even as she tipped her chair so far back she lost balance. Zexion caught the back of her chair and graced her with a teasing smirk. Kairi sighed.

"Don't sneak up on me like that."

"Sorry, I thought it would be fun. I had the impression that pranks were fun."

"It kind of was fun," Kairi replied, leaning back and putting her scissors down. She giggled. "In retrospect it was funny."

Zexion leaned over her shoulder, looking at the cut-out squares and coloured cardboard spread over her desk right next to a thick textbook lying open with a pencil to keep the page. "I'm still curious as to what you're doing here."

"Studying," Kairi answered, picking up one of the completed cards as an example. "I'm making palm cards. See, I make cards that I can use to play games about the stuff we learn in biology. It makes everything easier to remember and heaps of fun."

Zexion nodded and picked up one of the cards Kairi had been cutting out. It had a picture of a pair of objects that looked like two pairs of wonky clock hands. "Mitosis?"

"Yeah," Kairi said in awe of how quickly he guessed. "We were learning about that and meiosis this week. I'm making shuffle cards."

"Shuffle cards?"

"To play shuffle you shuffle picture cards up and then put them in order to tell a story. I mean, this isn't how you play it properly because there's a correct way to tell this story but with proper shuffle cards you just have a bunch of random pictures and you tell your own story with whatever you draw. I have a set, do you want to play?"

"I thought you were studying," Zexion quipped, picking up her textbook and skimming the text and pictures.

"Yeah," Kairi said with a sigh, sliding into a slump. "I like studying for biology since it's fun to draw the pictures but it's still hard to actually remember everything." She looked up at Zexion. He was now turning some of the pages, scanning more of her textbook content. "Although you probably think it's fun to just read the textbook."

"Reading is fun," he said immediately. It was a statement, so practised falling from those lips that it was automatic but in this state it lacked any feeling behind it. He put the book down and turned it back to the saved page, looking at Kairi. "You don't think so?"

"N-no, it is fun!" she replied quickly. "Not necessarily reading the textbook though. It doesn't tell a very compelling story, it's just facts and stuff."

Even as she said that she was pushing the half-finished cards around with her fingers until they were arranged in a diagonal line winding from one corner of the available space to the other. Zexion raised an eyebrow, impressed.

"You tell the story of mitosis quite compellingly."

Kairi smiled and giggled through closed lips. She gathered her cards together and put them to the side in a pile. "Thanks. You must read a lot of stuff. I remember you did a lot of research back in Disney Town."

"Now might be a good time for a proper break," Zexion suggested, sensing the change in the mood. He sat down on her bed and she got up to join him, scooting to the other side so that she had her back leaning against the wall. "The reading I do for research isn't a lot better than the factual summaries in textbooks but it's more detailed and more specific."

"But that's like reading for work or something," Kairi said, making a face. She'd seen the bored expression on her dad's face when he read over documents and reports for work. "Reading things for fun is way different. Don't you ever do that?"

"I don't know how to have fun anymore. That sort of thing requires feeling." An awkward pause dropped like a wall between them and she turned away from him completely. "However… I remember what it was like. My cognitive development was unusually accelerated and I learned to read to a very advanced level at a very early age. It wasn't always the textbooks and journal articles I read; the castle at Radiant Garden had a library that was full of all sorts of interesting stories."

"That must have been really nice, growing up surrounded by books."

"I remember that I enjoyed it very much." He glanced over at the shelf. "You seem to have a sizable collection yourself."

Kairi blushed and also looked at her modest collection taking up the top two shelves. "It's nothing like a library, though."

Zexion shrugged. "It doesn't bother me. I suspect that since our world never came into contact with your world you'd probably have books that never existed in Radiant Garden."

"Hmm… I wonder, then," Kairi hummed, sliding over to the edge of her bed and standing up. She went over to her bookshelf and picked up a book on a lower shelf, between some of her games and toys rather than on the upper shelves with the others. "That means you probably didn't have this, right?"

She showed him the lightly scuffed cover of a hardback novel with the corners blunted and a heavily creased spine. The only thing on the front was a picture of a fish – there was no title, no author, nothing to indicate what the story was actually about.

"What is that?" Zexion asked.

"It's called _The Lab in the Lake_ , it's the first book in a series," Kairi explained. "Mom used to read it aloud to me before bed. It's still my favourite book."

"What is it about?"

"It's about this boy who lives in a lab in a city that's in the middle of a lake," she said, coming back to sit down next to Zexion, "and then he goes on an adventure because he wants to find out why he's there. I've always kind of identified with him and when I was little I really wanted to live in the amazing city in the lake. Like, really, _really_ wanted to."

Zexion hid his lips behind his knuckles, staring at the book cover contemplatively. "Perhaps that spoke to a deeper longing."

"Hm?"

"Never mind." Zexion waved a hand dismissively.

"What about you? Did you have a favourite book that your mom read to you when you were little?"

"I'm quite sure my mother died before I was old enough to remember," Zexion said flatly, factually. "Or I was abandoned. The family that took me in was mostly convinced that my parents were both dead but I'm not sure that the evidence actually stacks up. All I can say for certain is that I don't remember what happened to either of my parents, just that they've never been there."

"Oh…" Kairi muttered, trailing off and looking away with a harrowed expression. Zexion blinked at her but then smacked himself in the head for his stupidity.

"I'm sorry, I know it must sound callous being spoken so bluntly like that but sometimes I can't help it. I didn't give myself the opportunity to think about it much, even before I lost my heart."

"That's…"

"Sad?" Zexion finished when it was clear that she wasn't going to.

He wasn't sure what to do now; she wasn't talking to him. What was he supposed to feel at a time like this? The hollowness inside gaped wider than ever. There were emotions loaded in this line of conversation, emotions spilling through the gaps in his cracked soul and he could feel none of them.

"Although, just because I lost my original family doesn't mean that nobody read me books."

"You were adopted by scientists, weren't you?" she said, looking at him again with a pitying expression. "That must have been how you learned to like science books."

"No, I liked science books because they expanded my knowledge. However, I don't believe I told you about my adopted family."

"You were one of Ansem's six apprentices, it's written in Sora's journal," Kairi explained, kneeling on her bed and holding her book in her lap. "I just kind of extrapolated, you know… that maybe you were adopted by scientists or academics of some sort and that's how you got good enough to get an apprenticeship."

"You're alarmingly shrewd," Zexion said, staring at her like she'd just transformed. "But no, it wasn't necessarily because of my upbringing that I was apprenticed. I was oddly excellent at a lot of things a child my age shouldn't have been but that wouldn't stop my brothers from treating me like a child. They read books to me, certainly. I think I can even say that there was one in particular that was my favourite."

"Tell me about it," Kairi said, leaning over until she was resting on his back.

"I can't recite it."

"Then just tell me about it generally."

"Hm… actually, I think it's better if I just show you." He stood up and she sat up, watching him curiously as he opened a dark portal and then stepped aside, gesturing to it with a slight bow. "Ladies first."

Kairi tucked her novel under her arm and hopped of her bed, stepping into the darkness with no hesitation. Zexion followed close behind and the portal closed without a trace.

Kairi's heart skipped a beat when she stepped into the room beyond the portal. Light streamed into a two storey library from tall windows along the wall with dust motes spinning in their bright beams. It had the musty smell of an unused room with a heavy overtone of old paper, glue, and leather. She took a deep breath and sighed wistfully. Every vertical surface of the room was covered in bookshelves. Even the structural columns were encased in circular bookshelves, maximising the amount of space available for the storage of books.

However, at the same time that she was marvelling at the stunning sight of so many colourful spines she felt as though she was still walking through a portal. It was a different kind to the dark one she'd just come through, which had air so light and no discernible surface to give her the impression that she was floating. This portal was thick, like trying to walk through water with a bed of soft, muddy sand. Every move she made, no matter what it was, gave her a sense of déjà vu; she was out of time with her own body.

"Where is this place?" she wondered aloud.

"This is the private library of Radiant Garden's castle," Zexion answered, startling her out of her reverie. "It's not an academic library so most of these books are fictional. I enjoyed coming here when I was a child."

Kairi turned around and around to look the room up and down, almost jumping out of her skin when she ended up facing a particular desk under the stairs. The library was completely empty and the chair was neatly tucked under the desk but for a second she swore she saw an old lady sitting in it and facing her with a wrinkly smile. "Somehow I feel like I've been here before," she muttered.

"Is that so? Hm…" Zexion put a hand to his chin. "That's intriguing. I don't remember you in the context of this space and access was very restricted. You either had to be a resident of the castle or have special permission to get this deep into the building."

"Was I a resident of the castle?" Kairi asked excitedly, giddily imagining all of the possible implications of that.

"No." Kairi deflated in disappointment but Zexion paid no heed, walking over to one of the column shelves and stroking the wood contemplatively. "These shelves weren't here before. That committee has been moving the collection around." He scrutinised the spines and clicked his tongue. "They're not very good at sorting books. Well, I could do something about it but that might make you bored."

He glanced at Kairi as he moved away from the shelves. She cocked her head to the side. "The committee? Are you talking about the Restoration Committee?"

"You know them?"

"Yeah. I haven't seen the committee itself but I met the members back in Traverse Town. Sora told me that they've been restoring the world ever since the darkness was vanquished, which explains why this place is so tidy and still kind of clean even after the castle was abandoned… at least, I assumed it was abandoned. I mean, how else would Maleficent have taken over it so easily otherwise?"

"You _are_ very clever," Zexion observed, making Kairi blush and toe the floor. Not having a heart must have been terrible for him and sometimes it was absolutely awful for her when he acted in the only cold and callous way he could muster but it also meant that he was quick to state anything he thought was a fact regardless of its consequence. "They left the castle alone before but I suppose they changed their minds about that sometime recently. Never mind. The book I'm looking for shouldn't have moved."

He walked along familiar shelves, tracing a finger along the spines until it landed upon a fairly skinny one. He pulled that one down from the shelf and took it back over to the desk under the stairs. Kairi eyed the desk doubtfully, since there was only one chair. How would they decide the seating arrangement? However, Zexion reached out towards the chair. The heart-shaped sigil in the upholstery glowed brightly and then flickered out just as another identical chair popped into existence with a poof of smoke and glitter. Kairi's jaw dropped.

Zexion sat down on the far chair and put the book on the desk between them. Kairi hesitantly approached the conjured chair, feeling the upholstery on the seat and leaning her weight on it. Only after she was completely satisfied that it was, in fact, a real chair, she sat down. The hard covered book lay closed between them. It was in worse condition than Kairi's novel – a sign that it was a very well-read book – yet the cover art was still discernible. It depicted a blonde and her pet owl relaxing on a fluffy cloud while looking up at the twinkling stars of a twilight sky and the title in curly text written on a ribbon banner above them read: 'Cloud City'. Curiously, Kairi opened the cover.

The first page she landed on was a double spread picture of the girl and the owl from the cover riding a roller-coaster steam train that sailed through the clouds on magic tracks but there were no words accompanying the picture. She turned the page. Then turned another page and then another and another, brow furrowing in confusion. Eventually, she started to skip several pages at once until she reached the end of the book. She turned to Zexion with a puzzled expression.

"Zexion… this book doesn't have any words."

"No, it doesn't. It's an anthology of stories told with the power of illustration and nothing more."

She frowned, turning back to a random page that had an almost comic-like arrangement of scenes. "But you said someone read this to you."

"They did," Zexion assured her, flipping the pages back until he reached the beginning of a very particular story. The book fell onto that page easily. It was one of the pages that Kairi had previously stopped at. One black page marked the beginning of the story with its title and the other had a picture of a forest fire in a rainstorm with a lone fireball on the ground in the midst of it. "That's why I told you, this is a very difficult story to recite—there's no way I can recite it because every time it was read to me the stories were slightly different, not just in wording but sometimes in plot. My brother could get quite imaginative with the images. This particular story was my favourite and I think it was his favourite too because he always chose to read this one to me. Listen, I'll tell it to you…"

They both leaned over the book's pages and Zexion began to speak, weaving the tale in the drawings without a single written word.

* * *

_14 years ago…_

Braig yawned. The entire castle was quiet now in the dead hours of the night and yet he was still here in the library looking for books. He was looking for something in particular – a reference he read some time ago that could be instrumental to understanding their current project better – but he couldn't find it in Ansem's academic library and the digital database only stored a record of its existence, not the full text. With a grimace he thought that, as a creative non-fiction, it might have been filed away with the other novels.

In the end his search wasn't in vain and he found what he was looking for. He grinned tiredly but he still had more work to do before he could even consider falling asleep yet. He carried the book on his way to go back up the stairs but stopped when he noticed that there was a light coming from under the stairs. He stepped around the staircase to investigate.

A little silver-haired boy in an oversized lab coat sat at the desk by the night-blackened windows with his chin in both hands as he stared down at a book lying open in front of him. The crystal desk lamp shone brightly, dispelling all shadows over the desk with magic, not just light. Braig smirked and sauntered over. No point trying to be stealthy, when that boy was engrossed with something the building could fall down around him and he wouldn't even blink.

At least not until Braig clamped a hand on his shoulder, making him look up suddenly with a startled gasp. "Hey, pipsqueak, I'm pretty sure bedtime for small people was hours ago."

"Yes, it was," the boy replied meekly, turning back to his book. "But we're all stuck with research lately, aren't we? There has to be something hidden in the literature or maybe in the data that we could find with a different analysis."

"Hey, hey, who's 'we'? It's _me_ and the other apprentices and _you_ are just the kid that lives around here."

"Perhaps not for long, though. If I can prove myself somewhat with this then I think even I can convince Ansem that I can be one of his apprentices too."

"Ienzo you're, like, three."

"I'm five."

"Still not a big boy yet." Braig leaned over to glance at what the boy was reading and then flipped it closed. "You gotta put down those bricks and do some reading for your own age group, kiddo."

"All the reading for my 'age group' is boring," Ienzo pouted, leaning back into the chair and slouching.

"What? No fun allowed now that you're trying to play with the big kids? That's cute." Braig pinched his cheek.

"Stop treating me like a child!"

"I will… when you stop being a child. I estimate that'll take… hmm, from now it'll be about fourteen years?"

"Why fourteen? That's such an arbitrary number."

"Because any earlier and you're still basically a brat and any later and you should have already gotten your life together, loser. So, how about that bedtime?"

"I don't want to," Ienzo whispered, turning away.

"Aw, someone's cranky. You need a bedtime story and some milk?"

"Dairy products stimulate the digestive system and make falling asleep harder."

"Story it is."

"I didn't say I wanted a story!" the child protested but Braig had already gone to the shelves to take down a thin, hard covered book with a slightly torn dust jacket. He brought it back to the desk and dropped it carelessly on the surface, conjuring himself a chair so that he could sit between Ienzo and the exit.

"This one's good, promise," Braig said, setting his own study material down and opening the pages of Cloud City. He began to flip through it and Ienzo watched over his shoulder with his brow creased.

"Braig, this book has no words."

"Ain't even a thing," Braig shrugged, settling on a story and creasing the spine to sit on that first page. "There are more ways to write than with words. They say a picture's worth a thousand words anyhow. Look, check this one out. Here's this little fireball. Little dude was just born on this hot summer day when this wicked storm flew over the forest and some lightning sparked this forest fire. But then the clouds let loose and the rain drives off most of the fire, except for this persistent little spitfire."

"Why?"

"Because this guy was special. See, he was the original spark of the fire that became the heart and as the fire grew his heart grew as well. When the rain stopped, he came alive and beside him he noticed this puddle and the being that grew out of it, for it was also a heart: the heart of the rain and without it the storm couldn't continue. So there they are, the heart of the fire and the heart of the rain."

"The fire seems to think the rain is cute," Ienzo remarked, leaning his elbow on the table and propping up his head.

"What? You don't think she's cute? Anyway, she's pretty into him too. And so they walk to each other, getting all up close and that, and they reach out but then… _fsshhh_! They can't touch!"

"Of course they can't touch without some kind of reaction. They're in completely different states of energy."

"Hey, I'm storyteller tonight, alright? You can read boring physics to me when it's your turn."

"Braig, _you're_ a physicist."

Braig shushed him. "Anyway, where was I? So, they're both pretty sad. They liked each other but his heat caused her to evaporate and her evaporating touch stole the energy from his flame so they'd probably kill each other if they stayed in contact."

"At least you're being scientifically accurate."

"Interrupt again, smart ass, and I'll read you more than one story." Ienzo tightened his lips and glared at him. "But inspiration strikes! Spitfire here finds them a little pebble and with it they hold hands by proxy.

"So there they go, hand-in-hand like adorable little lovebirds, taking a walk through the forest. Everything's burnt out, nothing but smoke and ash and charcoal and dead trees. All the animals have either fled or died in the fire so there's nothing; it's empty and barren in the forest but they find a little shelter and decide to stay for the night. Cute little buttons.

"In the morning, it's a nice day and the sun's shining on them through the dead trees, wakin' Little Spitfire. But his little rain drop, there's something up. The ambient heat through the night and the morning sun's rays have shrunk her but Spitfire's no egghead so he doesn't know what the deal is. That just makes it even more important that he never evaporates her himself which is why they have their rock… only it's gone! Some ants came along early in the morning and are carting it off to bolster the entrance to their colony. Little Spitfire's after them, running out into the open to get back that rock. Looks like their relationship is safe after all!

"But then more bad news comes along, when a hermit appears, looking for some embers to light his torch. He steals that Little Spitfire right off the ground and takes him away to his cabin in the clearing on the hill. By evening the hermit had put him away in a lamp to light his house from the window. Little Spitfire is trapped inside the glass oil lamp, only able to watch the outside world and pine for Rain Drop.

"Speak of the devil, there she is! Climbing up over the windowsill to meet her dude. You can see how happy they both are but she's gotten smaller, evaporating bit by bit on her journey to search for her missing Spitfire. She stays with him well into the night, getting smaller and smaller while Spitfire's stuck in the lamp with a consistent fuel source so he's not going out. But he notices Rain Drop's shrinking and he's overcome by sadness—he's gonna lose her. Then, in the dead of night, the inevitable happens. As they're drifting off to sleep it begins, she's evaporating completely. Rain Drop's whole body is riding off into the air until there's none left and Spitfire, well, he's pretty distraught. He saw his precious raindrop die and now he's alone, just waiting for whatever circumstances will conduct his own death. The hermit comes back and with his gnarly hands turns the valve that switches off the burner and snuffs Little Spitfire out into the darkness.

"It's dark for a while, which suits Spitfire just fine because he's so sad and so over life. His smoke, the last little bit left of him, just floats up into the night sky to the stars. But then a breeze blows past and he sees something – it's Rain Drop! And he's so happy. He reaches out to her and they can actually touch this time. Spitfire's just staring at himself in awe, he can actually touch Rain Drop and they won't hurt each other anymore. They can finally hold each other close, dancing on the breeze forever more. The end.

"How'd you like that, huh? Pretty wicked if I do say so myself."

Ienzo stared at him neutrally. "You're terrible at telling stories," he said and was about to say more but a huge yawn cut him off his original thought. "However, listening has actually made me feel drowsier; I don't think I'll be able to study effectively now thanks to you."

Braig grinned and ruffled Ienzo's hair. "Next time it's your turn, shorty."

Ienzo smoothed his hair down in annoyance. He picked up his book and hopped off his seat, squeezing his way around Braig's chair. "I don't know… we'll see. In any case, I'll see you in the morning, Braig."

Then he scuttled off suddenly, going up the stairs to get back to his room. Braig grinned and folded his hands behind his head. Ienzo was just too cute for his own good. He looked down at the desk, reaching out for the material he'd been looking for and froze. It was no longer there, replaced by a heavy tome, the one Ienzo was reading earlier, in fact. It quickly dawned on Braig what had happened and he slapped his knee, laughing raucously. He wasn't even mad.

"Well played, shorty… well played," he muttered.

* * *

_In the present time…_

"… Fire reached out to Rain, so elated in the moment that he forgot the barriers of energy that meant they could never touch. Only, Rain reached out to him too and this time when their hands met there was no pain or panic, just the humid caress of soft vapour against the ashy smoke. Finally, they could hold each other as close as they always dreamed, dancing on the breeze forever more."

Zexion stopped reading abruptly and immediately looked to Kairi. Her lips were pressed tight and her eyes were shining. She blinked hard. "Don't feel ashamed about crying, we're the only ones here."

"I-I'm not!" she argued, sniffing and wiping the tears that were starting to fall. "Okay, I am. It was really moving. Did your brother read it to you like that?"

"Not exactly. His vocabulary was a lot more limited than mine, especially in his everyday speech. People were often surprised when they read his written work. Whether it was the spoken or the written you encountered first, it was difficult to believe that they were produced by the same person."

"He sounds interesting. I think I'd like to meet him." Kairi folded her hands on the table and leaned her head on them. "The pictures were pretty, and the story was so sweet. It's like, no matter what love will transcend all, right? What do you think?"

"I think…" Zexion began, looking down at the final page of the story. "I think it's much more complex than that. This was the first story my brother ever read to me from this book, even though there were several preceding it. It must have meant something to him on a much deeper level than what it seems. Rain and Fire both lose something important to them but when they transform they're able to find it again. I think it's about how the things that are important can be returned in a different form and that even if it's changed, that's not a loss. And perhaps it can even be a gain."

Kairi's eyes turned to the book, letting the weight of Zexion's words settle in her mind. They sat for a long time in simple, thoughtful silence. The last picture on the last page drew Kairi's gaze, even at this angle so sheer that it was barely recognisable. Changing what you've become to regain what you've lost – that was what Zexion saw in it. She lifted her head and smiled at him, slipping her hand under one of his lying on the desk idly.

"I think you're right," she whispered, giving his hand a squeeze. There was more to say but there was a shield inside her keeping them at bay, for her own good, for Zexion's good, for the good of the moment. His childhood fairy-tale became his story and this book was proof to him that it was not yet over. He was Fire, trapped in a lamp waiting for the agent of his transformation—the metamorphosis that would bring back what once was his.

"You brought that with you," he suddenly piped up, making her start. She turned to look where he was looking and saw her novel, pushed aside to the edge of the desk. She brought it closer.

"Yeah, looks like I did. I don't know why, though. After listening to yours this book isn't really all that special."

"Isn't it? Perhaps you need to look at it with new eyes before you make that judgement. You seemed to think it was extremely special." _You even gave it its own place,_ he thought.

"It's special because mom read it to me, that's all," Kairi said, opening the cover and gingerly tracing a finger over the tall handwriting in the corner. "I haven't read the full story in a while but whenever I go back over some of my favourite parts I hear the words in my head being read in her voice."

"Perhaps that has value in and of itself."

Kairi hummed as she turned to the first page, almost surprising herself by how unfamiliar it looked. As she recalled, she'd actually never seen the first page of the story since her mother died, only ever flipped through to the scenes and dialogues she had liked the most. Yet, without fail, the words read themselves to her in such a familiar voice that it caused her heart to ache.

"I probably can't read it to you in one sitting," she said, almost apologetically, "but I can start."

Zexion just nodded, scooting closer and leaning over her shoulder to follow as she began, following the guidance of an ethereal voice in her heart as it had originally spoken the words many years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> So... that was "Hold Close" by IngridTan, inserted into Hold Tight, by me. I feel like should explain myself more with Braig but at the same time I don't really want to. Ever since BBS came out I've held this headcanon that being a part of the royal guard was a side duty undertaken by Ansem's apprentices for whatever reasons (as part of public duty or a sense of moral responsibility or w/e) but they were all scientists doing hard science work. I say I've had it since BBS because BBS kind of forgot to imply that Dilan, Aeleus, and Braig are also science people. DDD hamfistedly (sort of) tried to rectify that but I'm also pretending that DDD doesn't exist for partially related reasons.


End file.
